Descending On France 1780-Chapter 29 - 026 The Young Invulnerable

After making the decision, Mirabeau stood up, gulped down the cloyingly sweet pastry in one go, and then said to Anning, "Let's go, there will be food at the club, so no lunch for us."

Anning replied, "You forgot, I'm a commoner, and commoners only have two meals a day, morning and evening."

In fact, Anning was used to three meals a day, but his body was that of an indigenous person from this era, so he had already adapted to two meals a day.

Mirabeau said, "I almost also have only two meals a day, but I must have something in the afternoon to fill my stomach, otherwise I'll be hungry at night. Alright, let's go, Mrs. Evans, I won't be back until later this evening."

The old lady nodded her head.

Vanni asked, "Do you need help hiring a carriage?"

"No need, we can just hail one on the street," Mirabeau waved his hand, "you should go back to the Duke's place and wait."

Vanni nodded, then pressed her hands against her maid uniform skirt and bowed to Anning, "I shall head back home then, I hope you have a smooth visit with Mr. Robespierre."

"Mhm, be careful on your way back," Anning waved his hand.

Mirabeau asked, "Did you walk over here?"

"Yes, after all my place is only a block away from here, I just realized it's so close," Anning replied.

"But we must take a carriage to the Brittany Club; we need to cross two and a half districts of Paris," Mirabeau said.

At this time, Paris was already quite sizable, only slightly smaller than what would later become the greater metropolitan area of Paris.

Later, France decided to build a fortress-like wall around Paris to encircle the entire city, and the outline of that wall almost coincided with that of modern-day Paris.

It can only be said that France at this time already had the foundation for a bourgeois revolution: a large citizenry class.

The vast Paris and its people were the foundation for everything that happened later on.

Theoretically speaking, in modern Europe, only two cities had the basis for a bourgeois revolution, one was Paris, and the other was London, but the UK had already become bourgeois after the Glorious Revolution, so the Great Revolution eventually burst out in France.

Mirabeau went out and immediately hailed a two-wheeled carriage.

Anning rode through the districts of Paris in the carriage.

He leaned on the carriage window, looking at the bustling Paris streets outside the window, once again marveling at the prosperity of the city.

Seeing Anning's expression, Mirabeau commented, "You can't see scenes like this in your homeland, right? Paris has a plethora of coffee houses, taverns, and tennis courts. In the afternoon, there are salons everywhere, and the little Bourgeois wives would imitate the noblewomen at these salons."

Anning inquired, "Do the gentlemen not attend the salon?"

"The gentlemen have to work, as clerks, lawyers, doctors, engineers," Mirabeau self-deprecatingly said, "Only pen-pushers like me, funded by the Duke, can frequently join the ladies' salons."

Anning teased, "I guess those salons also provide you with plenty of writing inspiration."

"Exactly, and you probably don't know that those lustful stories of the Queen I wrote, they initially came from what the ladies told me. Like the Queen's Swede lover, at first it was the ladies gossiping, and then it came to my ears."

Anning commented, "And then you let all of Paris know. Did that Swede become more restrained afterwards?"

"Not in the slightest. In fact, it's pretty much public knowledge that the noblewives have lovers. It's seen as abnormal not to have one or two lovers. Correspondingly, the husbands have mistresses, but our Your Majesty is a bit special..."

Anning jested, "He prefers fiddling with locks?"

"Correct. So, he has no mistresses, which is quite the rarity in the Parisian nobility."

Anning raised his eyebrows and suddenly thought of something, so he asked, "The Duke of Orleans—I mean Mr. Tolleson, does he have a mistress too?"

"Of course, and the Duke's wife has her favorites, although the Duke's wife's favorite is a cross-dressing beauty, Colonel Oscar, the lady from the Guards defending the Imperial Palace."

Anning almost spit out, Colonel Oscar, a military officer of the Imperial Palace Guards, what kind of "Versailles Rose" storyline is this?

However, in the Versailles Rose, Oscar was involved in a lesbian affair with Queen Marie.

It wouldn't be that this cross-dressing beauty Oscar would end up like she did in the manga, dying in battle at the front gate of the Bastille, would she?

What kind of messy world line have I crossed into?

Mirabeau announced, "Here we are."

Anning got off the carriage, looking at the building in front of him, "A church?"

"A monastery, the main chapel was rented to the Bretons, so it turned into a meeting place," Mirabeau shrugged his shoulders, "In a place like Paris, the Church usually doesn't have farmland, so they could only open the venues to donating believers for public events. Many clubs are located within monasteries."

Anning uttered an "Oh."

Mirabeau led him toward the main building of the monastery.

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Upon entering, it was as if stepping into a coffeehouse where gentlemen gathered around tables in groups of three or five, engaged in loud discussions.

Anning heard from the table next to the door, a young gentleman loudly saying, "Alliance with Austria was a mistake! We should have allied with England!"

"You must be joking, forgotten the Hundred Years' War? The Maid of Orleans will weep in heaven!" another gentleman retorted loudly.

But the young gentleman remained unmoved: "Look at the current situation! We've had over seventy percent of our colonial trade cut off by the English; tobacco, chocolate, and coffee supplies in Paris are in crisis, even sugar has become exorbitantly expensive! What effect does Austria have? Austria does not have a single colony, it's unaffected completely!"

Anning couldn't help but interject, "Although it may seem that way, isn't the root cause that our navy has never defeated the Royal Navy?"

The gentlemen who were discussing vociferously immediately turned their heads, looking at Anning with confusion.

"Who are you?" the young speaker asked dubiously.

Anning: "Andy Frost, from Caen."

As soon as he spoke, the gentleman urging them not to forget the enmity with the English said loudly, "Oh! I've heard about you, the one who beat Reginald yesterday! Well done, that Reginald always looks down on those without noble titles, he often comes to provoke us."

The aggressive-looking young gentleman also immediately put on a friendly expression: "Well played! That guy provoked me last time at the salon, saying my father was only a clerk to a noble lord. Damn it, my father is clearly the prosecutor of the town!"

Anning: "In Reginald's view, probably any position a commoner holds is unimportant, after all, they're just commoners."

"Not even among the nobles are there many fools like him," another gentleman said dismissively, "I've noticed a pattern, the more rural the noble, the more likely they are to be fools. Many great nobles in the city have opened their arms to commoners, like the Duke of Orleans, for example."

At this point, Mirabeau interjected, "That's right, many enlightened nobles among us agree with Rousseau and Montesquieu. It's a trend, and this country bumpkin Reginald can't keep up with the times. I just went to greet others, and now allow me to introduce you. Mr. Frost, this is Georges Jacques Danton from Troyes."

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Anning looked at the young man skeptically.

This guy is actually one of the big shots of the Jacobin Club, Danton, Anning's impression of Danton was still based on the image from movies and TV series of later times, refined, wearing a white wig, and appearing to have an air of scholarly grace.

He turned out to be such a young hothead!

He looks to be not even twenty!

Wait, Anning vaguely remembered that Danton was only in his early thirties when he was sent to the guillotine, so shouldn't he be a young whippersnapper right now?

So the discrepancy between their image and the impression of later times isn't because the timeline has gone awry, but because I've come too early?

Danton extended his hand: "A pleasure to meet you! I heard you're also a war hero who was awarded the Legion of Honor?"

Anning shook Danton's hand: "Indeed, but I haven't been given the medal yet. Considering my only merit in the war was rescuing the eldest daughter of Duke Tolleson, General Carnegie's medal application might get rejected."

Danton: "That won't happen, the war has made everyone's life miserable, His Majesty needs something to distract the public. They'll give you the medal. But you just said, the current miserable situation, it's mainly because our navy can't beat the Royal Navy..."

Anning: "Isn't it?"

"Of course not! Not long ago, during the American colonies' fight for independence, the navy won, which is why we could send Marquis de Lafayette to North America to beat Cornwallis's English forces!"

Anning: "Although the navy won during the American War of Independence, England, with its naval tradition, is not so easy to defeat. A few years have passed, and it has licked its wounds and once again defeated our fleet. To defeat England with its long-standing naval tradition, we must adopt technological innovations, such as installing steam engines on warships, building coal-burning ships, or adopting rear-loading cannons..."

Anning, as an old military enthusiast, would get carried away when he started talking about these topics.

However, the gentlemen seemed to hear a joke and burst into laughter together.

Danton even patted Anning on the shoulder: "I'll be damned, you thought of that? Using coal to power ships, are you planning to paddle with a steam engine?"

Anning: "You could attach a paddle wheel to move through the water..."

"My God, a paddle wheel! He actually thinks of putting wheels on a boat!"

Another gentleman shook his head: "Rear-loading cannons will never exist because the breech sealing problem cannot be solved, the majority of the gunpowder would leak from the back when firing instead of exploding out of the muzzle."

"The sealing of flintlock guns is already bad enough, I often hear of people getting their cheeks burned when shooting, yet he even wants to use it on cannons!"

The gentlemen were giving their different opinions on Anning's ideas, seemingly thinking he was daydreaming.

Mirabeau also looked at Anning with a smile, mouthing to Anning, "Entertaining everyone is a good way to integrate into a new group."

It seems Mirabeau thought Anning intentionally made a radical claim to make everyone laugh.

Just then, a voice joined the conversation: "What are you all laughing at? No one knows how the future will turn out. If you can believe that one day nobles will be equal to commoners, why can't you believe in coal-burning sailboats and rear-loading cannons? In my opinion, these are even more achievable than the ideal of equality for all!"

Everyone turned their heads towards the speaker.

Anning scrutinized him: he appeared to be in his early twenties, yet unlike the scruffy Danton, he wore a meticulously put-on green coat, with his wig sitting perfectly in place.

He wore a pair of gold-rimmed glasses, which, nevertheless, could not hide his severe dark circles.

Danton obviously knew the newcomer: "Oh please, Maximilien, since when did you become an engineer playing with steam engines?"

Anning realized that the serious young man before him was the renowned "Incorruptible," "the Roman," Maximilien François Marie Isidore de Robespierre.

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